An Experiment in Adjusting an Alcohol-based Reality Filter.
The more beer you drink, the more the world seems to make sense. I'm not sure if this is the beer's fault, or the world's. Experiments proceed.
For pigeonholing purposes, I consider myself a South Park Conservative: I believe in Loose Women and Tight Borders but I'm getting anime porn and legally mandated lounges for day laborers...further adjustment to the model may be needed.
e-mail me at slayerdaddy-AT-yahoo.com

Judge approves settlement that clears way for cross in Mojave Desert, ends long legal dispute

By Associated Press, Updated: Tuesday, April 24LOS ANGELES — A veterans group can restore a memorial cross in the Mojave Desert under a court settlement that ends a decade-old legal battle, the National Park Service said Tuesday.

A federal judge approved the lawsuit settlement on Monday, permitting the park service to turn over a remote hilltop area known as Sunrise Rock to a Veteran of Foreign Wars post in Barstow and the Veterans Home of California-Barstow.

The park will give up the acre of land in exchange for five acres of donated property elsewhere in the 1.6 million acre preserve in Southern California.

The swap, which could be completed by the end of the year, will permit veterans to restore a cross to the site and end a controversy that became tangled in the thorny issues of patriotism and religion and made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003.

The last cross was ordered removed by the park service in 2010 because of a court order.

The donated land is owned by Henry and Wanda Sandoz of Yucca Valley.

Henry Sandoz, 72, cared for and replaced several crosses at the hilltop site over the years that were later defaced or stolen. He has a replacement 7-foot steel cross ready to go, said his wife, Wanda, 68.

“We’re very hopeful. We’ve been disappointed in the past,” she said in a telephone interview. “We thought when the Supreme Court ruled that we’d be out there within days putting it back up. Things move kind of slow but we really think this is it this time.”

Once the swap is complete, the park service will fence the site, leaving entrances for visitors, and post signs noting that it is private land. A plaque will be placed on the rock noting that it is a memorial for U.S. war veterans.

“We want to wrap this, we want to get it done,” Mojave National Preserve spokeswoman Linda Slater said of the controversy. “No cross can go up until the exchange is complete.”

Wanda Sandoz said a wooden cross was first erected on Sunrise Rock in 1934 by a World War I veteran, Riley Bembry. He and other shell-shocked vets had gone out to the desert to recover and would hold barbeques and barn dances near the site, she said.

Her husband knew Bembry and promised the dying vet that he would look after the cross, Wanda Sandoz said. He kept the promise for decades.

“We love the cross,” she said. “It’s in a beautiful spot. ... My husband is not a veteran but he feels like this is something he can do for our country.”

The wooden cross was eventually replaced with one made of steel pipes. However, the site became part of the national preserve in 1994 and that meant the cross was then on public land.

The settlement involves a lawsuit filed in 2001 by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of a retired park service employee who argued that the Christian religious symbol was unconstitutionally located on government land. Federal courts ordered the removal of the cross.

In 2003, Congress stepped in and ordered the land swap. But the courts said the transfer was, in effect, an unacceptable end run around the constitutional problem.

The issue wound its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in April 2010 refused to order removal of the cross and directed a federal judge to look again at the congressional transfer plan.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, siding with the 5-4 majority, wrote that the cross evokes more than religion.

“It evokes thousands of small crosses in foreign fields marking the graves of Americans who fell in battles, battles whose tragedies are compounded if the fallen are forgotten,” he said.

Justice John Paul Stevens, one of the dissenters, wrote that troops killed in battle deserve to be honored, but government “cannot lawfully do so by continued endorsement of a starkly sectarian message.”

Weeks after the court decision, the metal cross — which had been covered up to comply with court injunctions — was stolen. A replica mysteriously appeared on the site, but park service officials ordered it taken down because of a court order against displaying a cross on the site.

A second lawsuit was filed last year against the federal government on behalf of the veterans. That suit pushed for the land swap and will be dropped once the exchange is complete, said Gregg Wooding of the Liberty Institute, a Texas-based nonprofit legal organization that filed the suit.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

There was gravy on the poodle, there was sauce upon the pooch;
Still didn't make a full meal for Obama and the Mooch!
Then Mitt Romney showed up for a drive; the dinner all broke loose--
--and they ain't gonna push that meme!

Corgi, Corgi, what a hell of a dog to fry!

Corgi, Corgi, what a hell of a dog to fry!

Corgi, Corgi, what a hell of a dog to fry! --and they ain't gonna push that meme!

They chased the dinner round and round
The White House through and through!
They couldn't catch the greyhound or the little fat shih'tzu!
The Secret Service did a line
And slid right through the poo! -- and they ain't gonna push that meme!

Corgi, Corgi, what a hell of a dog to fry!

Corgi, Corgi, what a hell of a dog to fry!

Corgi, Corgi, what a hell of a dog to fry! -- and they ain't gonna push that meme!

The beagle ducked between their feet,
The shepherd bit them first!
They tore up the Rose Garden,
The Jack Russell was the worst!
The whippet hit the Press Room in a supersonic burst! -- and they ain't gonna push that meme!

Corgi, Corgi, what a hell of a dog to fry!

Corgi, Corgi, what a hell of a dog to fry!

Corgi, Corgi, what a hell of a dog to fry! -- and they ain't gonna push that meme!

The networks couldn't see them,
Nor the Media Matters lout;
They did their very damndest to stop
The story getting out!
But they forgot the Internet,
And Twitter was a rout! -- and they couldn't stop the meme!

Corgi, Corgi, what a hell of a dog to fry!

Corgi, Corgi, what a hell of a dog to fry!

Corgi, Corgi, what a hell of a dog to fry! -- and they couldn't stop the meme!

They laughed at Barack's diet,
Eating pooches got him dogged;
He tried to spin his habit
but Jay Carney flubbed and bogged.
He thought the story'd gone away;
He'd finally got a break! -- BUT OBAMA ATE A SNAKE!

Corgi, Corgi, what a hell of a dog to fry!

Corgi, Corgi, what a hell of a dog to fry!

Corgi, Corgi, what a hell of a dog to fry! -- And they couldn't stop the meme!

Monday, April 23, 2012

"With
Lolo, I learned how to eat small green chill peppers raw with dinner
(plenty of rice), and, away from the dinner table, I was introduced to
dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper
(crunchy). Like many Indonesians, Lolo followed a brand of Islam that
could make room for the remnants of more ancient animist and Hindu
faiths. He explained that a man took on the powers of whatever he ate:
One day soon, he promised, he would bring home a piece of tiger meat for
us to share."Yep, that's Barack Obama, writing about his childhood with his stepfather Lolo Soetoro in Indonesia, from Chapter Two of his bestseller Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.

Written Manfully, Read Wilfully!

Evil Needs a Bigger Gun!

The Space Opera of A. Bertram Chandler! Great Stuff!

Like Conrad in a Spacesuit!

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